Boya BY-AP4
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Model: Boya BY-AP4
Price: £59.73, now available for £39.99
Link: Boya
Review Reference: RC018
Manufacturer Specification:
1 x Pair wireless earbuds
1 x Battery charging case, Qi enabled
1 x Cloth carry case
3 x Pair silicon ear tips
1 x Type-C USB charging cables
1 x User manual (Chinese & English), quick guide (Chinese) & warranty card (Chinese & English)
Real Life Experience
The Boya BY-AP4 arrived in just two weeks from the Mouriv Aliexpress store, with a couple of enclosed full frame sensor cleaning swabs. Thanks!
Better known for their value microphones, it was a surprise to see BOYA enter the TWS market. I had high hopes for the AP4, especially due to their compact design and great looks. Unfortunately, that's where the fun ends...
The Unboxing - 8/10
First impressions are professional as you would expect at the higher bracket of the budget headphone price range. The box is premium and the manuals are enclosed in an envelope not dissimilar to those used by challenger banks to make the experience feel more high-end.
Once through the first layer, which details some of the key features, you get a nice insert with the BOYA logo printed on the front.
I never understand why these silly bags that don't stay closed are included but certainly not going to lose marks for it. As always you get tips and a type-C USB charge cable.
The Case - 9/10
The earbuds are available in three colours - white, black and grey. The white has a hint of baby blue on the case interior, the black an 'old gold' colour that would have been perfect owing to my lifelong allegiance or rather tribulation to my home town football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers (although it looks more like bright orange above). Despite this, I opted for the grey after I saw a YouTube review from Sean Talks Tech showing the texturised finish, and it did not disappoint.
The interior has a nice 'coffee' flavour to it with a caramel inside. The hinge is a little flimsy but has a nice although very subtle friction to it that is initiated when you push it back fully. It is by design light in order to allow flip-top 'one handed' opening. I can't stress how nice the case is - it's easily the best looking case I've reviewed so far.
The case has four lights at the front to indicate charge status. Whilst charging, the remaining charges will flash- so if you've charged it sufficiently to charge the buds 3 further full charges, 3 will be steady and 1 will flash when you plug it in.
One bonus feature at this price point is 'hall switch mode', which I'm told is the jargon for allowing automatic connection whilst they are in the case. This is news to me - it's not a feature I would look for but is supposedly one of the reasons Airpod owners justify their purchase. I tried the APP and they connected immediately - there is a short delay with the Boya, but it's still a pretty neat inclusion. It gives you time to then access Wavelet and EQ them, because if your preferred sound signature is like mine, you will probably need it.
As well as USB-C charge, the case also allows wireless charging, and gives up to 16 hours charging on top of the advertised 6, making a total of 22 hours.
Weighing in at 47g and measuring 48x32x50cm, it isn't by any means ultra-portable like, the FIIL T1 Pro, for example, but it is convenient. It's a similar size to the Edifier TWS NB2, but rather than lying flat, it stands upright like a cigarette box. Like the Edifier, this means that when the case is charging, it's upright. This is highly beneficial, and underrated. I find it annoying when the port is on the bottom, it's just messy and difficult to see the charge.
And despite this, it is only marginally larger than the Buds Live case in terms of footprint, my number one portable case. Boya put a lot of thought into this case and it delivers on every front.
The Ergonomics - 8/10
The Ap-4 are very nice on the eye and easy on the ear. But there's a few minor quibbles. The grey finish is nice enough, and the design is aesthetically pleasing as well as comfortable. There are microphones in the base for the voice, with the ambient mic on the inner side. The charge connectors are on the end, which, if worn at an angle reduce the risk of nickel coming into contact with the skin, especially as they are bevelled slightly.
The hole above the Boya logo is a flashing indicator light, and whilst the flashing when a call is coming though (double blue flash every 4 seconds), connection pending (blue flash every 0.5 seconds) and reconnection pending (single blue flash every 4 seconds) are unquestionably useful for single earbud mode and hall switch mode, unfortunately the buds also flash blue every 14 seconds to show they are connected, and red every 14 seconds to show battery low.
Whilst this isn't a deal breaker, it smacks a little of the old-fashioned, cheap earbuds from yesteryear. The light isn't too obtrusive and the form factor means you wouldn't lie down and listen to something in bed with them, but it's kinda annoying.
The fit is otherwise pretty good. I don't really like silicone buds for prolonged periods, and these are no exception, but they stay in the ear well with the largest tips, don't protrude out or inwards too far and are pretty subtle.
At just 4.6g they are lightweight. They include a pressure relief hole (somewhere) but do not feel invasive and are a good option for prolonged use.
With a length of just 30mm, they are the stubbiest buds of this form factor bar the Enacfire E90. This prevents them from being too obtrusive, but whereas the QCY T10 and Haylou W1 contour sharply, the Boya stick out a little, and are visible from front profile.
ANC - Not scored, PNI - 7/10.
As above, the noise isolation is very good. Despite not hugging your concha like the Tranya or Edifier TWS NB2, or having a bulbous base like the Omthing, the large tips do allow good isolation. They sit very light in your ears - whilst you can push them in deeper, it's at the cost of comfort and longevity - but when you do, they isolate even better. I have seen various adverts for these, including Amazon AE, that claim they have Active Noise Cancellation. This is misleading - they don't.
Audio Quality - 6/10 (for the price paid), 6/10 (raw score)
I have to be honest, out of the box I was utterly deflated. The mids are about as boxy as I've ever heard on a set of wireless earbuds, and the treble rolls off too early. It can make the audio sound pretty boring - and I don't mean boring in the sense of over-analytical, I mean...just boring and eventually fatiguing.
For audio books it sounds natural, but for female vocal tracks it sounds pretty awful and needs some work in the EQ. Feeding it through Wavelet surprisingly resolved some of the issues. Giving them a custom W shaped EQ, mimicking the Oppo PM1 with PM2 pads seems to solve the problem - instrument separation remains reasonably clean and the soundstage, whilst a little narrow, brings vocals to the front. Listening to 'Take on Me' by Aha was hardly what Morten and Co experienced in the studio, but it was good enough.
On iPhone, where I don't have an EQ app, it went back to sounding terrible. And by terrible, I mean god awful. What on earth were they thinking? I've tested mid centric IEM's before, but this was something else.
Call Quality - Indoors - 7/10, Outdoors - 7/10
Not bad at all. I tried a few calls with it and recorded them on my Poco as I wasn't 100% with the feedback I got.
They clearly compress background sound and seem to elevate your voice slightly. I would put them marginally ahead of the Edifier TWS NB2 in this respect.
Whilst the voice doesn't sound quite as natural as the Omthing, heavy traffic sounds more like wind - it does a very decent job of differentiating frequencies that require compression.
Boya don't specify the mic array but the SoC supports dual mic noise reduction. It certainly isn't in the same league as Airoha or Qualcomm's level of performance, but it's acceptable. This is the same chip Edifier use in the gaming GM4 buds, where latency is the priority.
Echoing is very apparent in large rooms, notably more so than others I've tested.
Connectivity, Controls and Other Features - 6/10
Connectivity is fairly solid but not spectacular. Don't expect anything more than the 10m advertised. It gives you a 'link lost' notification when it drops, which is handy and an improvement over the usual beeps.
One annoying attribute is the 'headset connected' voice prompt. Maybe it takes a while for the buds to remember they are in dual mode, but it leaves you wondering for the first few minutes if you've got a connection problem as they echo slightly out of time.
Controls are actually pretty good. Double tap plays and pauses, triple tap left plays the previous track, right the next. Single tap answers calls, long press right rejects. Except it also turns the volume up. This was kinda annoying as I couldn't reject a call easily, the only annoying aspect to the controls - the volume control actually works really well, although notably when you're not trying to hide from the phone ringing.
They use the Pixart PAU1603FB-S1 BT5.0 chip. This was not advertised, and I probably wouldn't have bought them had I known - it is the same chip used in ultra budget earbuds such as the QCY T6, confirming they definitely don't have ANC, and have a limited range, focusing more on low power and latency. The chip supports AAC and SBC - no aptX. Windows gave a latency of 230Ms, which is pretty good for SBC, and what I expect from this chip.
Wireless charging, binaural mode and hall switch, as well as decent controls, give it an above average score - it lacks certain features you should really come to expect at this price point, such as app support, ANC, multiple latency modes, etc. App support I can take or leave, but at this price point you're not far short of the 1More Comfobuds Pro, FIIL CC Pro, and other mid range big hitters, both of which have very good ANC, and even the Honor Magic are arguably better value. The Haylou W1, at half the price, blow them away.
Battery Life - 7.5/10
I got 5 hours 25 minutes charge from one charge, and the case gives approx 22 hours. The single playtime is very good, the case less so, but still adequate.
Final Comments
Overall, whilst looking pretty and performing OK, the Boya BY-AP4 suffer from sharing the field of play with outstanding peers such as the FIIL T1-Pro, which are cheaper and come with a vast array of features as well as future proofing you to BT 5.2.
Paying a little more also gets you buds like the Tronsmart Apollo Bold, which have a chipset which will eventually support aptX-hd, app support and EQ's.
The AP4 took a while to reach the mass market, by which point they had been overtaken by the aforementioned 1More, FIIL and ZMI PurPods Pro. This unforgiving market stops for nobody.
The case and good ergonomics are almost a given at this price point - Boya need to do far more to justify the premium price tag than the few nice features they've included.
Had they been priced at sub $50 I'd have been more positive, but at £60 I expect more. A decent name in the mic world will not guarantee a successful release, and if you're asking me whether they are twice as good as the QCY t12 or half as good as the Jabra 75t, the answer is no on both fronts.
So not a terrible effort by any means, but priced far too high for what they are.
Price Weighted Score: 59%
Raw Score: 67%
2022 Score: 60%
2022 Comments:
As with all tech reviews, after a year or so the content becomes slightly irrelevant, as much of what we are comparing to is based on the market conditions at that time. The AP4 have aged - a nice looking case and wireless charging aside, there are no major benefits especially at the price. Sound quality in particular is way behind releases with a similar price tag today, so consider the date of the review very carefully, in every case, not just this model.
Model: Boya BY-AP4
Price: £59.73, now available for £39.99
Link: Boya
Review Reference: RC018
Manufacturer Specification:
- Brand: Boya
- Model: BY-AP4
- Driver: Not specified
- Chipset: Pixart PAU1603FB
- Codecs: AAC, SBC
- Frequency Range: 20HZ-20kHZ
- Sensitivity at 100Hz: 102dB SPL/1mW
- Mics: 4
- ANC: No
- Volume Control: Yes
- Auto ear sensor: No
- Earbud Weight: 4.55g
- Gross Weight: 47g
- Case Dimensions: 48mm (width) x 32mm (depth) x 50mm (height)
- Case Charge Capacity: 1000mAh, 3.7w (tested, accurate)
- Full Charge Time: 120 minutes
- Quick Charge: No
- Wireless Charging: Yes
- Input: 5V 500mA
- Single Use Playtime: Up to 6 hours (50% volume)
- Playtime with Charge Case: Up to 22 hours
- APP Support: No
- Bluetooth Range: 10m advertised
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth® 5.0
- Bluetooth Protocols: HSP/ HFP/ A2DP/ AVRCP
- Water Resistance: Not listed
1 x Pair wireless earbuds
1 x Battery charging case, Qi enabled
1 x Cloth carry case
3 x Pair silicon ear tips
1 x Type-C USB charging cables
1 x User manual (Chinese & English), quick guide (Chinese) & warranty card (Chinese & English)
Real Life Experience
The Boya BY-AP4 arrived in just two weeks from the Mouriv Aliexpress store, with a couple of enclosed full frame sensor cleaning swabs. Thanks!
Better known for their value microphones, it was a surprise to see BOYA enter the TWS market. I had high hopes for the AP4, especially due to their compact design and great looks. Unfortunately, that's where the fun ends...
The Unboxing - 8/10
First impressions are professional as you would expect at the higher bracket of the budget headphone price range. The box is premium and the manuals are enclosed in an envelope not dissimilar to those used by challenger banks to make the experience feel more high-end.
Once through the first layer, which details some of the key features, you get a nice insert with the BOYA logo printed on the front.
I never understand why these silly bags that don't stay closed are included but certainly not going to lose marks for it. As always you get tips and a type-C USB charge cable.
The Case - 9/10
The earbuds are available in three colours - white, black and grey. The white has a hint of baby blue on the case interior, the black an 'old gold' colour that would have been perfect owing to my lifelong allegiance or rather tribulation to my home town football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers (although it looks more like bright orange above). Despite this, I opted for the grey after I saw a YouTube review from Sean Talks Tech showing the texturised finish, and it did not disappoint.
The interior has a nice 'coffee' flavour to it with a caramel inside. The hinge is a little flimsy but has a nice although very subtle friction to it that is initiated when you push it back fully. It is by design light in order to allow flip-top 'one handed' opening. I can't stress how nice the case is - it's easily the best looking case I've reviewed so far.
The case has four lights at the front to indicate charge status. Whilst charging, the remaining charges will flash- so if you've charged it sufficiently to charge the buds 3 further full charges, 3 will be steady and 1 will flash when you plug it in.
One bonus feature at this price point is 'hall switch mode', which I'm told is the jargon for allowing automatic connection whilst they are in the case. This is news to me - it's not a feature I would look for but is supposedly one of the reasons Airpod owners justify their purchase. I tried the APP and they connected immediately - there is a short delay with the Boya, but it's still a pretty neat inclusion. It gives you time to then access Wavelet and EQ them, because if your preferred sound signature is like mine, you will probably need it.
As well as USB-C charge, the case also allows wireless charging, and gives up to 16 hours charging on top of the advertised 6, making a total of 22 hours.
Weighing in at 47g and measuring 48x32x50cm, it isn't by any means ultra-portable like, the FIIL T1 Pro, for example, but it is convenient. It's a similar size to the Edifier TWS NB2, but rather than lying flat, it stands upright like a cigarette box. Like the Edifier, this means that when the case is charging, it's upright. This is highly beneficial, and underrated. I find it annoying when the port is on the bottom, it's just messy and difficult to see the charge.
And despite this, it is only marginally larger than the Buds Live case in terms of footprint, my number one portable case. Boya put a lot of thought into this case and it delivers on every front.
The Ergonomics - 8/10
The Ap-4 are very nice on the eye and easy on the ear. But there's a few minor quibbles. The grey finish is nice enough, and the design is aesthetically pleasing as well as comfortable. There are microphones in the base for the voice, with the ambient mic on the inner side. The charge connectors are on the end, which, if worn at an angle reduce the risk of nickel coming into contact with the skin, especially as they are bevelled slightly.
The hole above the Boya logo is a flashing indicator light, and whilst the flashing when a call is coming though (double blue flash every 4 seconds), connection pending (blue flash every 0.5 seconds) and reconnection pending (single blue flash every 4 seconds) are unquestionably useful for single earbud mode and hall switch mode, unfortunately the buds also flash blue every 14 seconds to show they are connected, and red every 14 seconds to show battery low.
Whilst this isn't a deal breaker, it smacks a little of the old-fashioned, cheap earbuds from yesteryear. The light isn't too obtrusive and the form factor means you wouldn't lie down and listen to something in bed with them, but it's kinda annoying.
The fit is otherwise pretty good. I don't really like silicone buds for prolonged periods, and these are no exception, but they stay in the ear well with the largest tips, don't protrude out or inwards too far and are pretty subtle.
At just 4.6g they are lightweight. They include a pressure relief hole (somewhere) but do not feel invasive and are a good option for prolonged use.
With a length of just 30mm, they are the stubbiest buds of this form factor bar the Enacfire E90. This prevents them from being too obtrusive, but whereas the QCY T10 and Haylou W1 contour sharply, the Boya stick out a little, and are visible from front profile.
ANC - Not scored, PNI - 7/10.
As above, the noise isolation is very good. Despite not hugging your concha like the Tranya or Edifier TWS NB2, or having a bulbous base like the Omthing, the large tips do allow good isolation. They sit very light in your ears - whilst you can push them in deeper, it's at the cost of comfort and longevity - but when you do, they isolate even better. I have seen various adverts for these, including Amazon AE, that claim they have Active Noise Cancellation. This is misleading - they don't.
Audio Quality - 6/10 (for the price paid), 6/10 (raw score)
I have to be honest, out of the box I was utterly deflated. The mids are about as boxy as I've ever heard on a set of wireless earbuds, and the treble rolls off too early. It can make the audio sound pretty boring - and I don't mean boring in the sense of over-analytical, I mean...just boring and eventually fatiguing.
For audio books it sounds natural, but for female vocal tracks it sounds pretty awful and needs some work in the EQ. Feeding it through Wavelet surprisingly resolved some of the issues. Giving them a custom W shaped EQ, mimicking the Oppo PM1 with PM2 pads seems to solve the problem - instrument separation remains reasonably clean and the soundstage, whilst a little narrow, brings vocals to the front. Listening to 'Take on Me' by Aha was hardly what Morten and Co experienced in the studio, but it was good enough.
On iPhone, where I don't have an EQ app, it went back to sounding terrible. And by terrible, I mean god awful. What on earth were they thinking? I've tested mid centric IEM's before, but this was something else.
Call Quality - Indoors - 7/10, Outdoors - 7/10
Not bad at all. I tried a few calls with it and recorded them on my Poco as I wasn't 100% with the feedback I got.
They clearly compress background sound and seem to elevate your voice slightly. I would put them marginally ahead of the Edifier TWS NB2 in this respect.
Whilst the voice doesn't sound quite as natural as the Omthing, heavy traffic sounds more like wind - it does a very decent job of differentiating frequencies that require compression.
Boya don't specify the mic array but the SoC supports dual mic noise reduction. It certainly isn't in the same league as Airoha or Qualcomm's level of performance, but it's acceptable. This is the same chip Edifier use in the gaming GM4 buds, where latency is the priority.
Echoing is very apparent in large rooms, notably more so than others I've tested.
Connectivity, Controls and Other Features - 6/10
Connectivity is fairly solid but not spectacular. Don't expect anything more than the 10m advertised. It gives you a 'link lost' notification when it drops, which is handy and an improvement over the usual beeps.
One annoying attribute is the 'headset connected' voice prompt. Maybe it takes a while for the buds to remember they are in dual mode, but it leaves you wondering for the first few minutes if you've got a connection problem as they echo slightly out of time.
Controls are actually pretty good. Double tap plays and pauses, triple tap left plays the previous track, right the next. Single tap answers calls, long press right rejects. Except it also turns the volume up. This was kinda annoying as I couldn't reject a call easily, the only annoying aspect to the controls - the volume control actually works really well, although notably when you're not trying to hide from the phone ringing.
They use the Pixart PAU1603FB-S1 BT5.0 chip. This was not advertised, and I probably wouldn't have bought them had I known - it is the same chip used in ultra budget earbuds such as the QCY T6, confirming they definitely don't have ANC, and have a limited range, focusing more on low power and latency. The chip supports AAC and SBC - no aptX. Windows gave a latency of 230Ms, which is pretty good for SBC, and what I expect from this chip.
Wireless charging, binaural mode and hall switch, as well as decent controls, give it an above average score - it lacks certain features you should really come to expect at this price point, such as app support, ANC, multiple latency modes, etc. App support I can take or leave, but at this price point you're not far short of the 1More Comfobuds Pro, FIIL CC Pro, and other mid range big hitters, both of which have very good ANC, and even the Honor Magic are arguably better value. The Haylou W1, at half the price, blow them away.
Battery Life - 7.5/10
I got 5 hours 25 minutes charge from one charge, and the case gives approx 22 hours. The single playtime is very good, the case less so, but still adequate.
Final Comments
Overall, whilst looking pretty and performing OK, the Boya BY-AP4 suffer from sharing the field of play with outstanding peers such as the FIIL T1-Pro, which are cheaper and come with a vast array of features as well as future proofing you to BT 5.2.
Paying a little more also gets you buds like the Tronsmart Apollo Bold, which have a chipset which will eventually support aptX-hd, app support and EQ's.
The AP4 took a while to reach the mass market, by which point they had been overtaken by the aforementioned 1More, FIIL and ZMI PurPods Pro. This unforgiving market stops for nobody.
The case and good ergonomics are almost a given at this price point - Boya need to do far more to justify the premium price tag than the few nice features they've included.
Had they been priced at sub $50 I'd have been more positive, but at £60 I expect more. A decent name in the mic world will not guarantee a successful release, and if you're asking me whether they are twice as good as the QCY t12 or half as good as the Jabra 75t, the answer is no on both fronts.
So not a terrible effort by any means, but priced far too high for what they are.
Price Weighted Score: 59%
Raw Score: 67%
2022 Score: 60%
2022 Comments:
As with all tech reviews, after a year or so the content becomes slightly irrelevant, as much of what we are comparing to is based on the market conditions at that time. The AP4 have aged - a nice looking case and wireless charging aside, there are no major benefits especially at the price. Sound quality in particular is way behind releases with a similar price tag today, so consider the date of the review very carefully, in every case, not just this model.
